The Darker Flower
by troutlily
Summary: "The two boys walked back to their work. My eyes lingered on the blonde one's back, I couldn't quite remember his name at the time." A girl from the North Side gets the counter job at the DX.
1. Chapter 1

**I wasn't planning on posting it so soon but was possessed by a moment of weakness. I'm not sure if this is worth pursuing yet, and I have a lot of schoolwork and applications to make out. So tell me if this is complete crap or not, yeah?**

* * *

**"You're just a baby in disguise." - Gary Puckett and the Union Gap**

My favorite color is blue. Not a soft sky blue, but dark, something you can firmly grasp and call your own. Something rough and real, that feels good when you hold it against your skin. I can remember the exact moment that I thought of this, at the DX on the east side of Tulsa, 1966. If I think hard enough I can imagine the exact gate with which he bounced from the garage into the main shop. The blue moved like water against his stained, white, tank top. His name sewn onto the pocket, the fabric was thin from years of washing. His hair was still combed back with Pomade, even though it was more stylish to let it fall long against your forehead. A lot of east side boys still did this, but none of them looked like James Dean the way he did. Maybe he didn't even look _that_ much like James Dean, but both men made my arms tingle just the same. I loved the way he smiled at me; my knees never shook like they did that first time he smiled at me. I would have returned the gift, but my tongue was so thick with teenage fantasy that all I could do was swallow.

Had it not been so thick, maybe I would have recognized that his smile was tight lipped; to contain his shock or contempt I couldn't tell, and I never asked. His dark haired friend was more blunt about it. His eyes roamed from mine to my breasts to my shoes. He looked stiff and uncomfortable, maybe even angry as he tried to catch the gaze of his boss, _our _boss.

"Mary, these are my best—well, _only_ working men." Clint smiled condescendingly at the two boys. I studied his white teeth, too perfect and too big for his narrow jaw. "Soda, Steve, this is Mary Smith."

Steve snorted and jerked his head in a half-assed greeting, the toothpick sticking out of his mouth lolled from side to side. Soda tipped his head gently but made no move to shake my hand. I clenched it where it hung by my side, mad that I hadn't expected this and mad because I should have.

"Nice to meet you." I smiled at them, and it turned into some kind of grimace as it always did. They looked unimpressed and not at all swayed to like me. Cami would have won them over if she smiled, Cami could have had both of them on their hands and knees if she was in the mood.

The two boys walked back to their work. My eyes lingered on the blonde one's back, I couldn't quite remember his name at the time.

Clint showed me how to man the register. There was barely enough room for two people behind the counter. The gift shop itself—that's what Clint called it—had enough room for a soda freezer, and a few racks of candy and magazines. Clint told me this was a popular hangout. I couldn't see why, the maximum capacity couldn't have been more than six.

"Simple job," Clint's young voice broke through my thoughts. "Ring people up, Soda and Steve will handle the orders, just make sure nobody steals anything." This wasn't a real job I realized with disdain. The job I had in North Tulsa was a real job. My mother said it looked bad, to be seen around the kind of people who lived in North Tulsa. I wanted to tell her hanging around white folks wouldn't do me much either way.

Clint drove me home after we had "orientation". He opened the door for me like a perfect gentleman, that's what my mother told me he was; although, he wasn't really the perfect gentleman when his eyes lingered on my thighs, exposed by the wind that kept pushing up my skirt in his convertible. Sometimes I hated Clint, the way he talked and walked like he was better than my mother. I was always wary of arrogant men, since my mother would bring so many home to dinner. I would often wonder if my father was one of them, arrogant and shifty-eyed and not at all who he claimed to be.

* * *

Cami's giggles were loud enough to escape our hiding spot beneath our bed sheets. My sister's nose was straight and elegant; it looked elegant even when it was all scrunched up because she was laughing too hard.

"Cami, shut up!" I hissed at her, reaching out to tug her hair. I'd already asked her five times and I feared my mother would storm down the hall to scold us at any second for waking everyone up. My sister grasped my wrist tightly, before I could reach her, and this only caused more laughter to escape from her throat.

"OK, OK, sheesh! But if you could have seen him, Mary!" She buried half of her face into the mattress and kicked her legs. She had been telling me about her latest boyfriend for the past hour. I asked her why this one was so special; Cami had stopped coming to me with secrets of her conquests four years ago when she got tits. She looked at me dreamily and said that his hair matched the gold of his watch, and his shoulders were the broadest she'd ever seen when he wore his letterman jacket, and if that didn't make me think he was special, she didn't know what would.

"Did you kiss him?"

She rolled her eyes like I was some petulant child. "No, he kissed me."

"What's the difference?"

"The girl should never kiss the guy."

I furrowed my brow at her. "That's stupid—why not?"

"Have you even had your first kiss?" Her large brown eyes stared at me mockingly, the light of our lamp filtered through the cotton sheets, causing her face to glow as if it was dusted in gold.

I met her gaze so I could have at least 30 seconds to think up a convincing lie. "Yes…at Debby's."

"Debby's?" She repeated back to me, I nodded unconvincingly. "You had your first kiss in a dress shop on the North side?" I nodded again. "Who was it, Debby herself?"

I latched my hand onto her upper arm as quick as I could and pinched her until she yelped. "What the fuck, Mary?" She smacked me a good one on the cheek and pretty soon we were scrapping, the covers torn off.

_"¿Qué pasa?"_ My mother hissed sternly. She was a small and delicate woman but she appeared to fill the entire doorway, the entire room in fact. Perhaps it was her deep voice or her old hairstyle she refused to get rid of, even though Jackie Kennedy wasn't first lady anymore.

_"She hit me!"_ Cami whined.

My mother's dark eyes widened and her mouth tightened into a small ball of anger; this was the look I had feared throughout my entire childhood, and still did. _"Be quiet! You'll wake your brother, Marieta get off of your sister now!" _I climbed back to my side of the bed, avoiding eye contact with her the whole time. _"Don't you know you need your sleep for work tomorrow? Mr. Eubanks is picking you up early, and nobody wants to buy nothing from a girl with bags under her eyes." _She never called Clint by his first name in front of us. She still believed, after living in America for 16 years, that it was of the utmost disrespect for children to call adults by their first name. She was always fearful of offending, like we'd be deported if we ever looked white folks right in the eye.

Nobody wanted to buy nothing from a bastard girl, especially one from Nicaragua.

_"Tell her, Mary."_ Cami looked at me mockingly. _"Tell her or I will."_

_"Tell me what?" _

I watched her open her mouth, ready to ruin my life with glee. The longer I watched the angrier I became. "Mary's—OW!" I grasped a fistful of her long, dark hair and yanked until she bent her head back so far she couldn't keep herself upright any longer. She fell onto her back yowling like a hungry cat.

Before I could inflict anymore damage, and I would have, my mother pulled me off of the bed with the strength one would expect to find in a construction worker, and not a five-foot-two woman. She cuffed the side of my head hard enough to make my eyes water.

_"If you wake your brother I'll take off your head, Marieta. Tell me."_

She was squeezing my forearm so hard my next words came out in a hiss. _"I'm not working at the DX anymore. I'm going back to Debby's tomorrow to get my old job back."_

_"No, you're not."_

I blinked, taken aback. I expected a lot, cursing, hitting, spitting, but I didn't expect her to blatantly deny me. My Spanish faltered; I had been living in this country so long English was my default. "Yes, I am."

_"No you're not."_

"Yes I am."

"_No you're not, you stupid girl!" _

"Yes I am!"

_"Do you know what Mr. Eubanks had to do to get you this job? Don't you disrespect Mr. Eubanks, you owe everything to Mr. Eubanks!"_

"I don't give a rat's ass about _Mr. Eubanks_. He can go fuck hi—" My intake of breath was so sharp that when she hit me her face went white as a sheet. The heat radiating from her dark eyes didn't lessen.

_"You're keeping this job, little girl. You quit and you'll be sorry."_

I didn't doubt her. My mother was soft when it came to men, but not with her children. She never made empty threats.

I crawled back into bed silently once she left. I cradled my left cheek where it stung. I couldn't look Cami in the eye, I was too embarrassed, and if I saw her I-told-you-so-smirk I would claw her eyes out.

But when she spoke to me as we both lay on our backs, her voice was soft. "Maybe it won't be so bad tomorrow, huh?" She tried to grin at me but I turned away. "Can't be so bad from what I hear…is he really that good looking?"

"Who?"

"Don't play dumb."

I closed my eyes and I saw a pair of lively brown eyes. They weren't bright, they had seen too much to be naïve. I just kept picturing the way he would sometimes smirk at the other boy. All of this passed across my mind before I glanced Cami's way. The light of the moon filtered through the curtains and across her face, highlighting her long lashes and perfect cheekbones, and filling my chest with a heavy, suffocating feeling. "You would like him."


	2. Chapter 2

**Holy writing block, it has been a LOOOONG time since I've tended to any of my stories. Blame the goddamn college process...anyho, this ole thing has been sitting on my desktop for ages. Finished it in a weird bout of productivity...nah, procrastination cause I should've been writing my research paper.**

**I originally wrote Soda sassier, but I feel like he's one of those mannerly boys *rolls eyes***

**Enjoy!**

* * *

**"Then a miracle—a boy, and that's called glad" - The Shangri-Las**

The minute my eyes met his hazel ones I felt like a little girl playing dress up. I don't know what possessed me the morning that I picked my outfit for my first day of work at the DX. I stole one of Cami's sleeveless blouses, and wore a pair of blue pedal pushers, knowing they'd been too tight since the seventh grade. When I looked at myself in the mirror, ignoring the honk of Clint's car, I imagined sauntering through the door of the gas station, behind the counter, the blonde boy's eyes lingering on my back. I didn't imagine _this_.

If yesterday hadn't clued me in, I could tell he was the meaner of the two, by the way he smirked at my curly hair draped over my shoulder, and the two buttons at the top of my shirt that were undone. To my surprise there was no contempt in his gaze, no fire, only glee; and this cut deeper than anything else, because all he wanted was to watch me embarrass myself. That felt more sinister than anger.

A white-hot prickle began at the base of my neck, and crawled its way up to the apples of my cheeks. I wondered if my latina skin would hide the stain of humiliation on my face. It didn't, a wolfish grin split across his face. He made his way to me quickly. It wasn't my bravery that rooted my feet to the tile floor, but my shock, the only thing I could move were my arms, which I promptly crossed tightly across my chest as he leaned down to look into my eyes. His face was so close to mine I could see the pores on his nose, and smell the nicotine on his breath.

"Go get 'em, _sweetheart_." And then he was gone, and as his figure disappeared through the garage door I wished that I had been able to work up the nerve to slap him.

After that I made a promise to myself that I would never look at the blonde boy again. I would never give him the benefit of the doubt, because if that was his friend, he couldn't be much better.

I broke this promise the minute he stumbled through the door, late. His DX shirt was slung over his shoulder; his stained wife beater clung to his lean stomach. I looked away, so if the other one was lurking around he wouldn't catch me biting my lip.

Clint came out of his office to talk to Soda, wearing his trademark smile that meant he was tallying up every little mistake you made in his stupid head.

I had been staring at the pair of them for so long I didn't notice the customer standing in front of me until he cleared his throat. I raised my eyebrows at him, but kept my mouth shut, he rolled his eyes.

"I'm here for pick up."

"Oh," I nodded slowly, trying to stall for time so I could remember exactly what Clint had told me yesterday. I opened up the book I had been told Soda and Steve would take care of, so I didn't look like a complete idiot, in it was a list of names and plate numbers and other things that looked like a foreign language to me. "What was your name again?"

"Smith," he said, his voice tight in annoyance.

"Um…" I scanned the page for a good minute, but there were about three other Smiths recorded and the tap of his boot against the floor was making my heart pound so fast in my throat that I couldn't think of anything else. "Why don't you go through that door, those two boys will show you where you car is."

"I know _where _it is, I need the keys." I bent down to search the shelves below for any kind of key box, at this point I was past the point of humiliating myself and just wanted the exchange to be over. "_Behind you_." He said loudly.

I squeezed my eyes shut as I turned around to the wall of keys hanging at my back. The man had spoken loud enough that I knew the blonde boy was looking at me.

"Learn how to do your fucking job, _chica_."

Clint caught him before he reached the door. I watched him shake his head profusely, gesturing to me with that crooked, shit-eating grin. The other man eventually cracked and chuckled at whatever it was Clint said.

"What did you say to him?" I asked when he approached me at the counter.

"Told him I'd give him a discount on his next visit. Can't be losing customers." He smiled. "That'll be coming out of your paycheck, of course." My _paycheck_, I almost laughed.

He clasped my hand. I flinched. I suppose he meant the gesture to be comforting, but it only made me want to take about ten steps away from him. I had seen him do this with my mother; images flashed quickly in my mind, one after the other, hushed whispers in the kitchen, a snippet of the interaction through a doorway I shouldn't have been lurking outside of, his hand grasping hers, her shoulder, brushing against her neck.

"Mary, I won't hold it against you since it's your first day, but…mistakes have a way of building up, now…don't they?" He might've been handsome at one point, could have been if he put on some weight. It was a source of tension between my mother and Cami. After about the third time he came around the house she started calling him Skeletor, behind his back. I don't think my mother would have been so angry if it wasn't so true, especially now, his light eyes, seated deep in his face, looked unnerved. "Mistakes come out of your pay, and mistake, after mistake, after mistake—pretty soon the pay's gone…" his thin, long, lips twitched into a smile, "then how will you reimburse me?"

"I guess you'll have to fire me then."

"Your mother practically _begged _me to give you this job, but I didn't need _begging_, Mary." I hated it, I hated when he said my name. "You've got some potential! Now why don't you prove I was right, huh, Mary?"

"Yes…"

His eyebrows knit together and he cocked his head. "Yes?"

"Yes _sir_." I managed, through gritted teeth.

I didn't look at him when he smiled, I didn't even look at him once he left the counter, and I decided that I would never make myself look into those shifty eyes again. I replayed the series of events in my head over and over, recalling each minute detail vividly; the moisture that developed between his hand and mine, the softness and calm of his tone. I wanted him gone, I wanted him to crawl back into whatever slimy hole he'd slithered out of, but most importantly, I never wanted him in the same vicinity as my mother again.

"The cash register's easy enough to figure out." I heard a tentative voice above me. "'Sides that, you're here to handle the keys 'n make sure nobody steals anything." He motions for me to look into the black book. "See here, we got all the names, and we write a number next to each of 'em, cause that's which hook it's hangin' on—see." He pointed to the wall behind me. "If you don't know how to do anything else, holler for me, 'cause…I don't think you want to be workin' here for free…like he said…"

"I don't want to be working here at all." I say forcefully. The boy nods like he expected that, and chuckles.

"Yeah, don't be so obvious." I narrow my eyes at him. "You think me 'n Steve didn't notice you poutin' yesterday when Clint was showin' you around?"

"_Pouting?" _

He grimaced and shook his head. "I meant you just looked miserable, and that ain't gonna put you in the boss man's good graces." He said the last part as gently as he could. I almost smirked; something told me he didn't have much practice with angry girls.

He caught the way my face started to soften up and raised his eyebrows expectantly. "Oh, th-uh…" he furrowed his brow at me. "Yeah, that's good advice…thanks." He looked stuck between grinning and full out laughing at me, when the other boy shouted from the garage.

"Are you _ever _going to get your ass in here? Seriously, quit flirtin'!"

Soda rolled his eyes. "Quit your whinin', I'm comin'."

I watched his back turn to face me, and wished he would say something, anything, so that I knew this wouldn't be the last friendly interaction we'd have. "Hey!" I blirted, he turned to face me, startled—probably startled that I could form a coherent word. "What was your name again?"

He tapped the nametag on his uniform. "Soda, and if you forget that, remember these nifty little things."

I covered my face with both hands once I was sure I was blocked from view.


End file.
